Hey, so how critical do you guys think that the RC combination on the non-inverting input is? If you take another look at my gainclone pcb, you'll see that I tied the non-inverting input directly to ground.. Any thoughts?

Also, what is the best place to get pcb's made? My school will only make me so many of these boards.

Jordan,
I initially used the RC on the pos side then took it off then tried a few different combinations going back and forth and I couldn't hear any difference. I really gave it a good listen and honestly ended up shruging my shoulders and left it the last way I had it which was shorted to ground. My speakers have good detail but are getting long in the tooth (12 years), but I consider myself to have good hearing (being in sonar and all). I don't know if technically this isn't an optimum thing to do but it works well for me.

__________________
Philip
"If you didn't make it with your own two hands, its not really yours".

Peter. You are my Hero that stuff just look so nice.! DAm Hopefully if i move to toronto i can have the chance to meet you inperson and so on. : o ) THIS LITTLE crap hole i live in sux. and nothing changes here. Hopefully i move there. : O )

I have just - as for curiousities sake - made a kind of "baby GC" using the LM1876.
As you all know this is a stereo version, with 15W max. or so.

The main disadvantages are: The distances for the feedback are different from one channel to the other and, most of all, there is only one negative supply pin for both channels, which prevents it from using two separated psus.

I - this time - followed more or less the application schematic from National (non-inverted) but without the cap in the feedback path and without the zobel network. The psu are two 22200yF caps by Roederstein (the two pos. pins connected to each other) and a .47yF HQ MKT from + to -. I used a single 10A regular bridge and a 2 x 16V / 250VA transformer. All wiring in done in p2p, of course.

After firing up the tiny beast, it quickly showed up that there was too much DC offset (0.3V), which was corrected by two 47yF panasonic caps in the FB path.

To my very great astonishment even this amp sounds surprisingly good. It does not have the control of its "bigger" brothers, but is not bad nevertheless. And although I only had it mounted on a small heatsink it was capable to play to a fairly high level.

But I think that it still gets "into some kind of oscillation" after some listening, because after it is getting hot it stays a little warm, even with no signal. Maybe I should add the zobel to get out the last instabilities.

Voila ! This is maybe the cheapest possible DIY amp with reasonable sound quality you can make, and it is surely good enough for secondary duties, like driving surround speakers etc. And it is so small ! Without thinking about the heatsink (and the transformer) you could fit one of these into a box in the size of a compact cassette.

peter, when you get tired of this unit and move on, SELL ME THIS ONE! I would drop a couple on hundred on this in a second! I have no chance of building anyhting that beautiful. congrats! and remember....sell it to ME! LOL! tony

I imagine that depending on pot's resistance, the circuit will be more or less prone to oscillatintg. I used both 100k and 50k at the input, and 50k version sounded better, but other factors had influence as well. Also it was my impression that 100k version had more tendency to oscillate.